As a Canadian living in the US I'm constantly amused at the left/right divide here. Left wing politics in this country would, in any other western nation, be considered centrist (if not a little to the right), and right-wing politics here would be fairly extreme right in most other places.

The right-wing is well-entrenched, so 'progressive' is not always that progressive. You have to give up a little ground to avoid looking psycho.

On the other hand, America is much more statist/socialistic in some regards than they like to admit.

E.g. the state gives lots of support for home ownership, including government sponsored mortgage guarantees. Or the power of all those crazy unions. Nominally more social-democratic Germany or Scandinavia look tame by comparison on those aspects.

"E.g. the state gives lots of support for home ownership, including government sponsored mortgage guarantees. Or the power of all those crazy unions. "

Both of which has bankrupted many states..and the auto industry (union power).

Um... A quick Google reveals:

Union membership as percent of workforce in: Sweden: 78.0% (2003) United States: 12.0% (2006)

I don't think you have proper appreciation of the historical power of the unions in Swedish politics. In comparison, the U.S. unions are a fringe.

I was not talking about the membership numbers. The Economist recently ran some quotes contrasting a Swedish union boss with nominally centre-right Sarkozy.

Anyway, just retract my claim about Sweden. I don't know nearly enough about it.

But I know that in Germany unions are in general quite business friendly, and not nearly as inflexible and insisting on entitlement as, say, the UAW was portrayed in what I read.

When people in the US talk about liberal media bias, the frame of reference is the average US voter's leanings. By that standard, dominant news sources (the incumbents, the ones considered most credible) are inarguably left biased. Some ridiculously high percentage of newspaper reporters, like 90%, vote for the Democrat (or other third party left leaning candidate) in every election. While this particular point isn't proof of bias necessarily, if we were to establish that Fox News' reporting staff voted 90% for the Republican, I feel confident it would be shouted from the rooftops in the online circles I run in.

Neither a Democrat nor Republican, but find the ongoing pretense by many otherwise brilliant people that the dominant US media isn't left biased to be an incredibly silly rationalization.

How are dominant news sources liberal when they were notoriously non-critical of the Bush administration's war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan up until Iraq was in the midst of a civil war (Which the "liberal" media was so kind as to refer to it as "sectarian violence"). The New York Times and NPR even refused to use the word torture to describe water boarding - despite the fact that if you dug into their archives they certainly called it torture when it was done to Americans by the Japanese during WWII.

The only issues where I'd say the news media is genuinely more liberal than the average American is gun control, and I'd say that has more to do with the fact that just about every person in the news media lives and/or works in a major City where gun violence is a problem. Considering gun control hasn't been a major platform issue of the Democratic party since the mid 90's, and is of little interest to the modern progressive/liberal movement (they are far more concerned with social and economic matters), it's hardly fair to classify them as across-the-board liberals.

Unfortunately, our perception of bias is heavily influenced by our personal biases. My recollection of the Bush years was very different, the anti-Bush sentiment are much more prominent in my mind.

It would be an interesting technology project or site. Do a sentiment analysis of major media sources. Search for how often a particular phrase is used. e.g.

Immigration: "Illegal Alien" or "Undocumented Worker"

Abortion: "Pro-Life" or "Anti-Abortion"

Something that could update in real time. It is unavoidable that every news site will have some slant, but an objective number based on rational criteria would be a good tool ala the nutrition facts labels on food packages.

I think Stephen Colbert said it best: reality has a liberal bias.

Personally I don't find these kind of statements that useful. I think it would be more accurate (and hopefully cause less instinctual defensiveness) to say that the politics in the US is extreme right vs center right, so one should expect most educated people to gravitate to the true middle, which puts them on the US "left".

Well said. Seems like I remember a while back (several election cycles) they did a poll not on how reporters voted but on who they donated money to. Where something like 90% of most media organizations reporters/staff/etc donated to liberal candidates, at Fox News only 75% donated to liberal candidates.

Do you have a cite for that? I couldn't find anything googling quickly and it sounds awfully suspicious.

In any event, I'm not sure it means much: most news organizations operate out of major cities, and major cities tend to have more liberal populations. If it was economically feasible to start a world-class news organization in a rural part of the Bible-belt, things might be different, but apparently it is not.

Sorry I don't. This was quite some time ago, like maybe Clinton's first term. It was probably something I read in print rather than online.